Denali National Park

(Note: We were out of Internet range for a while, so I'm catching up. This was written on July 5th)


We've parked our house in a scruffy RV park in Healy, 12 miles north of the entrance to Denali National Park. We thought this would be cheaper, and we'd avoid the crowds in the Denali campgrounds. However, we're right next to the highway, in a tiny site designed for a 30' trailer, I think. They have bigger sites, but we just wanted electric, and this was it.

Visitor's Center Interior

This morning, July 3, we drove our bug down to the National Park to see what was going on. There is a strike by the local bus driver's union, and since the buses are the only way to get very far into the park, so we had low expectations. It turns out there was nothing to worry about. The buses are running, and we don't know what the strike is affecting.

We stopped first at the Visitor's Center, a beautiful building. We found the crowd to be active but not overwhelming. We watched a live presentation by one of the rangers on the life and biology of the 65 wolves living within the park boundaries. Partly scientific, partly emotional, and all designed to support the notion of the wildlife preserve. After that, we walked through the various displays in the visitors center, describing in good detail the animals, flora and history of the park. The park was founded in 1917 as a game preserve to protect the Dall sheep in the mountains. It has since expanded to 6.6 million acres. The fact that Mount McKinley is within the boundaries is more of less coincidental, as the Alaska Range is the natural habitat for the sheep.

After checking out the displays, we went back to the theater and watched a video called “The Heartbeat of Denali”, one of those incredible video presentations that had to have been filmed over several years in the park, edited to perfection, showing unimaginable scenes of wildlife in action, up close and real. Wonderful scenes of the flowers and tundra, and covering all the seasons as the park evolved throughout the year.

After that, we wandered into the book/gift store, found a couple books and do-dads to buy, then got some lunch at the restaurant. Lunch was mediocre. After lunch, we went to the bus ticketing area to see what was available. We had been warned by our several guidebooks that buses were always full, and it might be two days before we could get a ticket as a walk-in. But the recession seems to have done its job for us here as it has elsewhere. We decided to take the 8 hour Tundra Nature Trail bus, and we could have gone on the spot, or at any time the next day. Out of the dozens of bus trips available, only one was full, and that one left in a few minutes. I bought the tickets, which set us back $104 apiece.

Enjoying the Park View

After buying the tickets, we drove the 12 miles of accessible road into the park to look at what there was. There was one viewpoint where the Mountain was theoretically visible, but the day prevented seeing much. Although it was mostly clear where we were, it was hazy and clouds shrouded our view to the peak. We did see one caribou resting in a wash. At the end of the open road (only the buses can go further into the park) we turned around and went up to the shops along the highway near the park entrance and got an ice cream cone. The thermometer was reading 82 degrees. After that, we wandered back to our home. We had spent 5 hours doing very little at the park, but had lots of fun.

Tundra Wilderness Tour – Day 2

Bus on the Park Road
Saturday, July 4th. We wake to find the day clear but apparently very muggy, visibility limited by the haze. We would later discover that this is smoke, not haze, from a forest fire burning near Nenana. The bus tour tickets disclose that there is no refund if we miss the bus, and no accounting for the weather. We arrive at the bus stop over ½ hour early. We've brought all the things the books says you should bring... extra socks, our own food and water, rain gear, bug spray, and of course cameras and lenses. It turns out that the book is preparing you for a day trip; on a tour, you pretty much stay inside the bus, so most of that is unnecessary.

Our pick up point is the Chalet Resort, just outside the park boundary which is the Nenana River. Our bus arrives, and we are first aboard. We sit apart, since we both want windows, Consuelo to breathe, me to take pictures. The bus is nearly full. The tour includes a box lunch and water, and we end up waiting about 15 minutes while 2 vegetarian box lunches arrive. We stop at another hotel to pick up 4 more passengers.

The name of our driver/naturalist/tour guide is River. He's been doing this for 20 years. He starts by giving us the ground rules, safety instructions. We then start the long ride into the park, with River telling us about the history and mission of the national park, setting our expectations for what we may or may not see. He describes wildlife sightings as something of a poker game. He says he's never been skunked, and tells us about one really bad rainy day when they only saw one fox. He tells us to shout “STOP” if we see something, then call out the location based on clock directions: The front of the bus is 12:00, the back is 6:00, etc. In a few minutes, we see another bus stopped to look at something, and River gets hand signals that describe what and where it is. It's a couple of caribou hiding in the trees in the taiga (the thin evergreen forest). Everybody helps everybody else look in the right direction, and soon we move on to what we hope will be a better sighting.

Dall Sheep

The bus ride is described to go to the Toklat River, about 57 miles in from the Parks Highway (Parks Highway is the road from Anchorage to Fairbanks... the bus is on the Park Road). At mile 12 is a ranger station, which prevents private cars from driving further along the Park Road. A ranger hops aboard to welcome us, and further remind us that we are entering a wilderness area. Indeed, in 6.6 million acres, this one road is the only encroachment resembling civilization.

We continue on, making occasional stops to view Dall sheep along one of the mountain faces, grizzly bears scratching for roots along a grassy hillside, more Dall sheep along one of the braided rivers. River tells us about the animals, their habits, ranges, diets. The interaction between the bears, the wolves, the sheep and so forth. He compares the grizzlies here with those that feed on the salmon down in the Kenai... bears in Denali are primarily vegetarians, though they may catch game from time to time. But there are no salmon laden streams here, so Denali bears top out at around 600 pounds, and Kenai bears can reach 3 times that.

Grizzly Sow & 3 Cubs
We continue into the park, crossing Sanctuary River, making a pit stop at the Teklanika River. We climb through Sable pass and Polychrome Pass. Top speed for the bus is 35 mph. We eventually wind down to the Toklat River for another pit stop.

At the Toklat River, our driver tells us that he has the option to continue on another 20 minutes to Stony Overlook, where we could see Mount McKinley on a clear day. After a quick discussion, we proceed to this point. He tells us that the mountain will not be visible today, there's just too much smoke, and when we get to the stop, we'll still be 45 miles away. We arrive to find just the faintest glimmer of the snow on the mountain virtually invisible, and unnoticed if River had not pointed out where it was. But I was happy to get a few good pictures of the tundra flowers along side the overlook parking area. After a few minutes we loaded back onto the bus and headed back the way we came.

Visibility along the way was quite different between the two sides of the bus. Consuelo and I both sat on the left side of the bus, and on the way out, we had the best view of the landscape and animals, since the road tended to hug the hills and mountains on the right side. Even with my one bad eye, I was the one that spotted the Dall sheep along the river. On the way back, I was almost as vigilant in looking for game, but the hillsides were more difficult to see and provided better cover for the animals, so none was seen. We did stop at one overlook for photos, and a pair of red foxes came walking down the road toward us, but disappeared so quickly that nearly nobody got any pictures.

The bear sow and 2 cubs that we saw on the mountainside were still there when we returned, but had moved closer to the road, so we stopped again and took more pictures. We also saw a couple another bear in a hollow with 3 younger cubs, and caribou in a couple of places.

The bus, which was an old Bluebird, developed a complaint about being too hot, which presented itself with an alarm buzzer. River did what he could to keep it cool, but it was annoying. The mechanics happened to be on strike, so getting it fixed might be a problem at this time.

River carried a video camera with a fairly long lens, and the bus was equipped with flip down TV monitors every 4 or 5 seats. When we sighted animals, he stopped the bus and found them with the camera, bringing them fairly close so that all could see them clearly on the monitors. This really did help people see what was out there, because many sightings were of animals 3 or 4 hundred yards away.

As we left the tundra and returned to the taiga, many folks started conversations among themselves. I talked with Sigfried and his wife, from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Consuelo and I discovered that most of the people on the bus were travel agents on a tour from Holland America, taking in what we had seen in over 2 months in about 12 days. We appreciated their experience but were just as glad we didn't have to be up at 5:00 AM as they did to start most every day.

Just before we left the park, we had one more sighting. A crowd of people had stopped on the park entrance road to look at something. We soon discovered that it was a lynx, hiding in the trees, and apparently ready to pounce on a rabbit close by. I never did see where it was, but I snapped dozens of pictures, hoping that I would be able to see it when we got home. Consuelo saw it, and pointed out where it was in the trees in my pictures. A terrible photo, but River told us that in 20 years and thousands of trips into the park, he had seen lynx only about 15 times, so it was definitely a rare sighting.

The bus finally dropped us back at the hotel. The 8 hours on a bus, went by fairly quickly, so busy was I scanning the landscape and taking pictures of the few animals and flowers, and the grand landscapes that we were able to view. We agreed that the $104/person price was a bit steep for what we got, but we were glad that we did it.